


Aging Gracefully

by SunsetOfDoom



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen, Referenced/Implied Alcoholism, Sith Warrior Characterized As Vaguely As Possible, fear of getting Old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:23:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunsetOfDoom/pseuds/SunsetOfDoom
Summary: Vette is hitting a milestone, and not sure how to deal with it. Clearly, alcohol is the answer.(Alcohol isnotthe answer. Quinn could tell her this, if she asked.)





	Aging Gracefully

**Author's Note:**

> God damn Shannon for A: getting me started on this game and B: gracing me with this newfound Quinn obsession. This dumb, kickable boy with his dumb, kickable face.
> 
> Anyways.
> 
> I always need more Vette and Quinn in my life, and it's hard to find bonding fics with just the two of them. So I... made one. Just a couple hundred words of them being awkward almost-friends.

Vette looked up, blurrily, from her drink, and found Quinn there, very suddenly. He’d snuck up on her. She could really just hope he hadn’t caught the crying jag.

She smiled, not sure if he’d been sitting there for long, and debated saying ‘ _ hello _ ’ for the same reason. Eventually, she picked up what remained of the drink, tilted it in his general direction, and just said, “ _ Ayyyy _ .” in a vague sort of way.

Then she threw back the remainder of the clear alcohol. It was her  _ birthday _ . She was doing whatever she  _ wanted _ .

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a severe black eyebrow as it arched up in judgement.

“‘S my  _ birthday _ .” Vette explained, with some difficulty. “I can- I can do... Whatever.”

“Clearly.” His voice was very even, and he was deeply put-together even though there were two of him.

“I’m-” She hiccupped. “I’m thirty.”

“I heard.” Quinn confirmed. Even though Vette was fairly plastered, she could hear the careful consideration in his tone.

“It’s-” She set her elbows down on the table, noticing all at once how sticky it was from the remainder of the drinking. “It’s a lot. I thought I’d.... Be somewhere. Be someone. By now.” Oh good, the ‘ _ unfortunate honesty _ ’ stage. 

She thought she’d already cycled through it by now, when she was crying her eyes out for twenty minutes- some because Pierce had given up and gone to bed and she was alone, some because her mom was dead and her family was splintered. And mostly because- she was old, she was  _ thirty,  _ her life was half-over and what did she have to show for it but a broken slave collar and a few piled-together credits?

Looking up, she realized that Quinn looked like a startled eopie, caught in the headlights of a speeder in the road, and that she was probably scaring him with her unseemly  _ emotions.  _ Well, he’d snuck up on her, and this was what he’d signed up for.

“I- I just thought. Maybe I’d have something. Like a... I don’t know. Some big con that I ran. Something I stole. Some claim to fame. Or at least a big stockpile of money that made me feel safe.” Vette continued, making big gestures with her arms.

Silently, Quinn reached over and took her empty glass away, where she couldn’t knock it over. She thought about saying thank-you, but more words were bubbling up and she couldn’t stop them.

“An- And it’s-” She swallowed, hard, looking at the empty glass; as long as she’d still been drinking, she’d been able to ignore the nausea. “It’s hard cause- Twi’lek women, we have an  _ expiration date. _ Thirty means you’re worth less. Thirty is like.... get it out of the room, we want the  _ young ones _ .”

His face seemed to twitch uncomfortably as soon as she mentioned her race, and out of pure spite and suppressing the nausea, she soldiered on.

“So I tried. I really- I tried to not be the- the fuckin’- the-” Vette gestured for the glass, a little desperate for more moonshine, and Quinn took her arm in his hand. While she jolted from the contact- his hands were warm and she could feel his blaster calluses- he pulled a hypo out of literally nowhere and  _ stuck  _ her with it, which was rude but it made the nausea subside. “Thanks. Where was I- right. Tried not to be the whore. I tried not to be the dumb young Twi’lek slut. I tried  _ so hard. _ ” Her voice cracked. “But here I am freaking out about being old and worn out. So I- I dunno.”

His cold blue-grey eyes fixed her for a moment, and Vette just stared dumbly, her drunk brain about six steps behind and unprepared for eye contact. In all the time they’d been living together, she’d never noticed his eye color.

Before she could fully recover enough to say anything, Quinn got up, took her glass, and went to the sink. Rinsing it out a few times, his back to her, he started to speak, so quietly that Vette had to strain to hear, her lekku twitching with the effort.

“My thirtieth birthday occurred a few years into my post on Balmorra.” He said, difficult to hear over the running water. “I... Erm.” He cleared his throat. “I felt that my life was over. I had been on every gifted track, every scholarship program, from a very young age, and I felt that I was... entitled. To a certain career path.”

“Met the rest of the guys on Balmorra.” Vette mused, fascinated with the veins on her hands. “You coulda run rings around ‘em.”

Quinn coughed, and she was getting good at figuring out what it sounded like when he was disguising a laugh. “I shan’t argue with you in your condition. But I... I admit that it was difficult. That milestone. Reaching it alone, discarded.”

“Fuck ‘em.” Vette slurred. “Fuck ‘em all.”

He hummed, and all of a sudden, there was a glass of water in front of her. She blinked at it blearily, and a pale hand tapped it twice, telling her to drink it. It seemed like a good idea, so she did. Water was good. Why didn’t she drink enough water? It was so  _ good. _

While she was swigging- probably because her eyes were closed- Quinn cleared his throat again. “Erm. So. Perhaps this, at least, is a step above  _ my  _ thirtieth birthday, because I came very close to dying of alcohol poisoning, and I shall endeavor to make sure you do not meet the same end.”

Vette coughed, swallowed wrong, and choked. Her hand was lowered, the glass not thrown in her fit, as Quinn got up and pounded her non-gently on the back until the pain subsided.

“You almost  _ died _ ?” She rasped, tears streaming, as she fought to breathe.

That was definitely amusement that she sensed, her lekku picking up Quinn’s pheromones as he stood behind her chair. “The medical officer scraped me off of the floor. I spent a few days in the infirmary and was counselled to drink lightly from then on.”

“Ten creds says you didn’t listen.” Vette managed. Her breathing was still raspy, but she picked the water glass back up, very aware of how awful she was going to feel in the morning. Or... whenever she happened to wake up.

When Quinn’s face appeared back in her field of vision, he was smiling- only the second or third she’d ever seen on his face. “I absolutely did not.” Tapping the glass again, he sat back down. “Drink this, and you will feel manageable in the morning.”

“Ugh.” She groaned. “I used to never get hangovers. I used to be young an’- and full of... I dunno. Being-nineteen asshole confidence and not getting hangovers.”

“Age happens to the best of us.” Quinn said, managing to sound like a dick about it. She made a face, drinking more of her water.

They sat in silence for a while, Vette attacking her water like there was a prize at the bottom, Quinn making the silence too awkward to be companionable with his sheer discomfort. The dim lights of the kitchen, turned down during the sleep cycle, flickered a little over their heads, and Pierce’s snoring ripped through the background hum of the engines.

The glass hitting the table-now empty again- was a drum of finality, and both of them seemed slightly relieved.

“So I, uh.” Vette grasped the back of the chair, trying to turn, stand, and get her feet under herself at the same time. It was too many actions at once and her body knew it, nearly twisting her out of the chair altogether. She hung on with a faint cry and a long career of not falling to her death. “Fuck. I should... Go.”

Trying to untangle herself from the chair- how many legs did she even  _ have _ ? This was too many legs- she heard Quinn’s voice as almost background noise.

“Do you... Need assistance?” He asked her, sounding weak about it.

She groaned. She really, really wished the answer to that question could be  _ no _ .

“Yeah.” She whined. “Sorry.”

Quinn sighed, and she could hear-feel his  _ lie-back-and-think-of-the-Emperor  _ reluctance through her lekku as he got up.

“Fine.” He said, hooking an arm under hers. “Fine.”

“Sorry.” She said again, annoyed this time around. If he didn’t want to carry her, he could have just let her struggle. “You offered. Don’t- you’re-” Struggling for the words she wanted, something about a martyr complex, the fluorescent light above her head flickered and made her flinch with the sheer unpleasantness of life, and she gave it up. “Fuck you, Quinn.”

“I  _ could  _ drop you.” He offered, still supporting her gingerly. His arm was tucked awkwardly under her armpit, unwilling to go near her waist, and he’d pulled her arm up onto his shoulders. Their height difference made it much worse.

“Do it, bitch, I dare you.” She slurred, her feet kicking vaguely at the ground.

He sighed heavily, put-upon by this terrible galaxy where lovely Twi’lek women draped themselves on him. Most Imperials would kill for that, no matter their official stance on  _ nonhuman life-forms _ , and Vette hoped he knew it.

They were standing in front of her bunk all of a sudden, and she blinked. Pierce’s snoring behind them sounded like industrial machinery, which meant Jaesa’s earplugs were in and they could make pretty much any amount of noise. 

“Come see me tomorrow, if you need medication.” Quinn offered, whispering anyways, and went to set her down. Vette really wasn’t sure what to do about the transition with her brain still back in the kitchen, and leaned into him.

“Um.” She said, aware that he was very warm and very tense. “I-” Oh boy, the crying was back, she hadn’t missed the crying. “I’m sorry. About- how fucked up your birthday was. I...” She searched for the right words and tried to breathe through the waves of vague emotion.

“What?” Quinn whispered, tensing further and almost drawing back. Vindictive, Vette leaned harder.

“I’m sorry you were so alone.” She managed to get it out without tears, suddenly and unreasonably upset about lonely young Quinn and lonely young Vette and every stupid, sad member of this stupid, sad crew.

All at once, Quinn stopped withdrawing, quit trying to get away. He just stood still, and let her lean on him awkwardly. Which was kind of like an almost-hug, in a Quinn kind of way.

She felt his prickly chin land on her lekku, resting his head.

“I...” he hesitated. “Thank you.”

“‘S all good.” She managed, not quite coherent.

Under her shoulder, his chest moved in what she was certain was a laugh. “Thank you, Vette. Happy birthday. See me in the morning for painkillers.”

Something brushed across the top of her lekku, and it might have just been Quinn pulling away, but it might also have been a light brush of a kiss. 

Vette didn’t have any time to think about it as she toppled into the bed, and contemplated... things. The galaxy. The Sith. The Empire. Her stupid crew, the weird family she’d collected, a friendly Sith and a weird grey Jedi and a.... whatever Broonmark was. Some Imperial soldiers, who she still wasn’t used to thinking of as  _ people,  _ but who proved themselves to be weird, stubborn, unfairly likeable bastards.

Turning thirty damn years old, what she’d accomplished, what she hadn’t.

The stars, swirling around in her vision, sparkling on the insides of her eyelids in distracting patterns... And before she quite realized what was happening, she was asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> (Is there anyone in this Galaxy that really believes Quinn _wasn't_ a giant alcoholic on Balmorra?)
> 
> Please don't encourage me. Someone please point me at the error of my ways and make me repent my sins, before I start writing OC/OC porn and 10,000 word road-trip stories about Vette and Quinn and their weird almost-sibling might-be-banging relationship. Or Quinn and Doc. Or Quinn and Pierce. Shannon, this is _all your fault_.
> 
>  _Damn_ my dumb ass for starting this game.


End file.
